Anyone who’s familiar with the term ‘clean eating’ or ‘paleo’ will also be familiar with the term ‘superfood’. Ask any clean eating fitness enthusiast what to fill your fridge with and they’ll undoubtedly list foods such as: blueberries, oats, spinach, broccoli, kidney beans, sweet potatoes, kale, and so on.
What I want to argue here is that there is no actual such thing as a superfood. In fact, there are many underrated foods that are actually far superior, in both price and achieving long term weight loss. Below I’ve listed the 8 most underrated fat loss foods that you need to stock up on.
1. White Potatoes
Potatoes are incredibly cheap and versatile. You can buy them by the kilo for next to nothing and cook them in loads of different ways. They are high in starchy carbs which boost your hormones called leptin and keep you fuller for longer. White potatoes have been used on many successful weight loss interventions and are actually often recommended by medical doctors. The key is to avoid dressing them with butter and mayonnaise.
2. Strawberries
Strawberries per gram are cheaper than blueberries and lower in calories. They also contain more vitamin C. Strawberries are a must-have for any dieter. In terms of calories, a whopping 600g of strawberries is equivalent to one Kit Kat bar. The large volume strawberries provide keeps you satiated longer than almost any fruit.
You can eat them in your cereal, use them in a healthy desert or simply gorge on them alone.
3. Decaffeinated Coffee
A trend common in amongst the ‘clean eating’ crowd is coffee aficionados. Many health enthusiasts take great pride in understanding the different types of coffee and what health benefits come from each particular bean. For good reason too, cultures that drink coffee tend to live longer than those who don’t. But there’s an even better alternative: decaf.
Decaffeinated coffee has been shown to suppress appetite longer than regular coffee. It’s also been shown to cut the risk of bowel cancer in half. Drink as much of it as you like, and don’t worry about not falling asleep.
4. Brussel Sprouts
Broccoli, kale and spinach are favourites of healthy eaters but sprouts often get overlooked. This is a shame, sprouts provide more protein in a serving than any of these other vegetables. They’re high in fiber and heavy and voluminous for maximum satiation. Brussel sprouts should be an invaluable part of any dieter’s eating plan.
5. Diet Soda
Diet soda has got a bad rap in the health community in recent years and for a silly reason. Aspartame – the artificial sweetener found in diet soda — was shown to promote cancer in mice. People got scared, but there was no need. Firstly, a mice’s metabolism isn’t the same as a humans, when human studies were carried out, no negative health consequences were found. Secondly, the amount of aspartame given to the mice was equivalent to a human consume roughly 24 litres every day, for weeks — a ridiculous amount.
Diet does not lead to weight gain because it contains no calories. It does not negatively affect appetite and is perfectly healthy. Many dieters use it to control their sweet tooth. It’s a great tool.
6. High Bran Cereal
Oats are a huge favourite in most weight loss diets but they’re actually not as great as people think. They’re very high in calories and respectively low in fiber. Fiber is an essential component of any healthy diet and especially useful in weight loss because of it’s satiating properties.
A much lower calorie, higher fiber option is high bran cereal. In the US Fiber One is a great option, in the UK All Bran is also great.
7. Baked Beans
Baked beans contain, in just one tin, 24g of fiber. That’s the exact same fiber RDA for a fully grown man. As previously discussed, fiber is incredible at keeping you full and naturally reducing the calories you consume.
The sauce in baked beans makes it perfect to combine with foods like brussel sprouts and baked potatoes.
8. Instant Mash
Instant masted potato is as cheap as it is satiating. Prepared in a few short minutes, the unusual makeup of the instant mash powder expands as you pour hot water into it. This expanding mechanism creates more food volume in the stomach and tricking the mind into thinking you’ve eaten more than you actually have.
Instant mash has only 120 calories and only 1.3 grams of fat for every 200g eaten.
Use these 8 underrated weight loss foods to hit your goals. If you want to lose weight the most important attributes of the food you eat are the carbs, fat, protein, fiber and overall calorie count. Strange sounding vitamins in so-called ‘super foods’ aren’t going to help. I hope this article on the other hand, does.
